No, but my dogs are xenophobes. They don’t like anyone who hasn’t lived with them (and thus are considered part of their “pack”). When the chihuahua was younger, this reaction was worse towards men, so I guess he’s sexist, too. (His previous owner is quite distrustful of men in general.)
I have had many dogs in my life, and almost all of them had some individual likes or dislikes…Dolt the inbred Doberman hated anyone wearing things that bounced or jingled on their person, including cops, firefighters, utility workers, anyone in a tool belt. He also hated, with white-hot passion, anyone with facial hair. His mother detested nuns in habits, and would reguire vigilance when on a walk, because she would cross six lanes of traffic to attack a nun, but only if they were in a black habit, white habits were fine with her.
My last two dogs have both been abused rescues, and in each case their racial issues are probably linked to their abusers. Mokuru, a “chowbrador” hated black people, any gender, any age, but especially black men. She was found inside three plastic garbage bags in a dumpster, so she also hated garbage bags for the first year of her life. With the help of some brave and compassionate black friends, we were eventually able to tone this down, we got her to stop attacking on sight, but I don’t think we ever really eliminated the trait.
Echo, my current dog, a sweet black lab/golden cross, has not one mean bone in her body, but for the first month that she was with me, my neighbor, a Hispanic male, would make her wet herself whenever he opened the back door and hollered for his children. The voice of a Hispanic male, whether speaking English or Spanish, was enough to send her cowering in the nearest corner. With time and work, she was able to overcome this, too.
So, what? Are Cecil’s fingers broken or something. Why can’t he just post a thread himself, like the rest of us?
Our female rat terrier loves my fiance (he raised her from a pup) and all women EXCEPT Indian women in saris. She barks herself stupid. She tolerates children and most small dogs. Our male rat terrier only hates small dogs. He loves all humans so far.
My purebred non-rescued golden retriever has not come across many black people in her time, either in the neighborhood or at the dog park.
However, we sometimes walk her at the high school at night, and there are often kids waiting outside to be picked up. About 50% of the kids we pass happen to be black and she has never reacted any differently to them than she does with the white kids.
I had two retired racing greyhounds. The one who was adopted from Mexico had fear/aggression issues with Hispanic men. If he was safe inside the house and saw Hispanic men passing by, he would growl and bark. If he was outside, he would cower in fear and attempt to run away.
Our other dog, who was adopted from Colorado, had a quirk on the opposite end of the spectrum. He loved, loved, loved grey-haired men. If he saw a grey-haired man across the street, he would go on high-alert, tail-wagging status. He would greet a grey-haired man as if he was greeting his long-lost owner.
None of the dogs I’ve owned over the years have been racist. Right now I have a lab, and a beagle. My family is black in a white area, though so they get exposure to blacks and whites. I’m not sure what they’d do around someone of another race, since they haven’t had that experience.
My (black) cousin’s mastiff mix didn’t like dark skinned black men.
A Weimaraner, you say? Hmmm… where did they originate from?
My old dog, who we raised from a puppy, didn’t like black people. He also didn’t care for people in uniforms. Might have been the meter reader, we never knew. He’d bark and growl.
I lived next door to a dog who would go nuts on the front porch whenever a black man would walk by. It was the owner’s theory that the dog was abused as a puppy by a black man. I don’t know whether she had actual knowledge of this, or if she was merely assuming. The dog was a Labrador/rottweiler mix.
Now, sexist dogs, I’ve had two. One was a part German shepherd mutt, and the other a purebred Shar-Pei. Both were fixed females and both hated men. But the exception was that they adored my father, who I suppose was accepted as the Alpha male. They’d accept any female human who walked into the house, but any man would raise their hackles and send them into a barking frenzy. We always had to make sure we had a female housesitter when we went on vacation.
In the area I live, there has been quite a few West African immigrants moved in, and I’ve noticed both males and females giving a wide berth to people who are walking dogs, regardless of their(the dogs) size.
What’s all that about then? I’d ask them myself, but trying to start a conversation when you have a 45 kilo Rotty performing as though a bear was about to attack, just isn’t feasible.
Our lily-white Snoodle*, Daisy, is exceedingly tolerant of all races, with the lone exception of Tatars, specifically the Lipka Tatars of Belarus. We have no idea as to the genesis of her singular-focused xenophobia, but it is absolute in nature and terrifying in practice. Thankfully, she outgrew her misogynistic tendencies post- puppyhood, but her Belarusian Lipkan Tatar bigotry…sadly, that only intensified. Ironically, she gets along famously with our Main Coon Cat, Tibby, a raging anti-Semite. Go figure.
- To maintain canine anonymity, this photo does not depict the real Daisy, but merely a reasonable facsimile of our dog, found through Google Images.
The intensity range of my dog’s defensiveness is below, with one being the most intense and 5 being the least.
- Other dogs
- Black men
- People on bicycles
- Men
- Kids on scooters
He has almost no reaction to women, unless they have a dog with them or are riding a bicycle. He seems to hate seeing people on wheels other than cars, trucks, etc–I guess he can’t figure out what’s going on.
I think the “black men” thing is that since dogs are supposed to see only in black and white, and he is most used to seeing white people, he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing when someone appears black.
He’s a West Highland Terrier.
When we moved to LA as roommates in a house with five other Gay guys, the owner of the house got a German Shepard from an old couple who had abused the poor thing by keeping it chained day and night on a small balcony. Those owners were older white people
So, we got the dog and at first it really didn’t like anybody much, but soon made friends with all the roommates. However, to the embarrassment of everyone in the house, this dog went ballistic whenever anybody of color walked by - black, Hispanic, Indian - but was quiet whenever any Caucasian went by (unless they started towards our door). (Nobody in the house was racist in any way whatsoever!)
It was so bad, it once got loose and the poor UPS guy was screaming for help while standing on a car roof as the dog tried to get to him.
Otherwise, this was a very gentle, smart dog. It was very smart though - one of the newer roommates (white guy from Canada) didn’t like dogs much and ignored this one. That was a mistake - the dog never liked him and every once in awhile would take a crap directly in front of that guy’s door to his room - and only there!
My gut feeling told me that if for whatever reason this dog picked up on the fact that you didn’t like him, or were afraid of him, he would take advantage of the situation - sort of like a “bully” perhaps - and maybe that is because it was bullied for so long by that older couple.
This kind of sounds like, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…”
He doesn’t sound like a gentle sweet dog if he’s only obeying the people he likes and is taking advantage of the ones he doesn’t. Shouldn’t he listen to you as his owner when you tell him to mind pretty much all humans?
Throwing out another hypothesis:
I wonder if it has something to do with certain cultures behaving differently towards dogs.
In my community, people of south asian descent seem very spooked by dogs; they’ll look at the dog while facing you, they’ll take a giant step away for every small step the dog takes towards them etc.
I’m sure dogs would be able to pick up much subtler cues than these.
It may be possible that my dog is just stupider or friendlier than average. But I have a friend who doesn’t like dogs. For good reason, he was a child in South America and was dragged by feral dogs for looking dinner before his mother rescued him. He is a really white guy. My dog loves him, and we’ve had to train him to keep his distance. The other dogs don’t seem to have an issue with him either (there are times when there are three or four dogs in our house, and this guy. Who holds up very well, but is NOT comfortable around dogs.)
My fraternity had a timid Shepherd mix who was afraid of her own shadow and would only bark at two types of people: black men (except the two black members of the fraternity), and Domino’s deliverers regardless of race.
We adopted a retriever mix from the city animal shelter. When we got her, she was an estimated six months old. The scarce information we have on her history is that she was surrendered by someone who was going to prison.
We suspect that in those six months, she was abused by a Hispanic male because to this day, (she’s about seven years old now) she will cower at the sight of most any Hispanic male. Hispanic females, no problem. Hispanic youth? Indifferent. Black, white or Asian of either gender? No problem. It’s just Hispanic men that she tries to hide from.
Unfortunately, we did not know this until we moved to an apartment in the Mission - a predominately Hispanic neighborhood. :smack: Just taking her for a walk could be a challenge.
My dog that passed away a few years ago was very much a racist. She hated blacks. I got her from animal rescue when she was about a year old and she already had that behavior when I got her. It caused a few embarrassing moments during her lifetime.
She also didn’t like people in uniform. She loved our neighbor who was a policewoman, as long as she was out of uniform. In uniform, the dog would bark at her and threaten to bite her. The dog didn’t seem to be able to recognize her as the same person.
She was also a bit sexist. She didn’t like men much, regardless of race. She was much more racist than sexist though.
The dog was a Norwegian Elkhound, by the way.